Maintaining an efficient milk recording system during a national disease outbreak and a global pandemic - ICAR Milk Recording Workshop

Maintaining an efficient milk recording
system during a national disease
outbreak and a global pandemic
ICAR Milk Recording Workshop

Bevin Harris, Christine Couldrey, Brent Wollaston and Andrew Scott

A national disease outbreak

A national disease outbreak
Background

• Mycoplasma bovis was rst identi ed on a New Zealand dairy farm in July 2017
• It is dif cult to diagnose in an individual animal as the bacteria can hide from
      the immune system within the body

• Often untreatable – in the majority of cases antibiotic treatment is
      unsuccessful, and symptomatic animals are culled.

• The New Zealand government has implemented a strategy to achieve
      nationwide eradication
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A national disease outbreak
Impact on LICs herd testing business

• It is critical that LIC staff and services avoid spreading Mycoplasma bovis
• Avoid the risks of our eld staff and herd-testing equipment being vectors of
  transmission between farms

• This lead to number of operational changes to our herd-testing business
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A national disease outbreak
Business Changes

• Administration
  • Texting service (notify before arriving on farm)
  • Pre-call to con rm M.bovis status prior to the herd-test event
• Hygiene
  • Introduced disinfection procedures — arrival and departure from each farm and all equipment is
    disinfected

  • Changed of delivery mode to avoid mixing of gear
• Laboratory and equipment supply
  • Waste milk from herd-testing was disposed using managed waste procedures
  • Increase the equipment and inventory levels to buffer supply disruptions
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A global pandemic

A global pandemic
     Background

     • LIC has been fortunate that the impact of Covid-19 to date has been relatively
       minor compared to the rest of the world

     • Experience and systems we deployed for M. bovis we helped us prepare for
       operating in Covid environment

     • As an essential business in New Zealand, LIC has had to make several
       signi cant operational changes to minimise the possible spread of the virus
       within our lab environments, and to avoid risks of our eld staff contracting or
       spreading the disease
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A global pandemic
Business Changes

• Pre-call to con rm health status of farm staff
• Issued masks and hand sanitiser and strict instruction to stay home if sick
• Paused the herd-test assist service at covid level 3 and 4
• Central laboratory sites introduced work from home for all those that were able to
• Central laboratory sites introduced masks, physical distancing and daily
  temperature checks

• Laboratory rosters were changed to provide 15 minute downtime between shifts
  so personal did not interact
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Innovation

Innovation
     Continual operational improvement
     Extracting increased value from herd-test samples

     • Even in an operationally challenging environments such as those caused by M
       bovis and Covid-19, it is more important than ever to keep innovating

     • The major areas of innovation:
       • Maintaining future supply of milk recording equipment, improving the lab
         ef ciency and improving the on-farm herd-testing process

       • Identifying new technologies that generate increased value from the milk
         recording samples
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Innovation
Continual operational improvement

 • Improving the lab ef ciency
 • Increased use of robotics for improved consistency
 • The challenge was to automate a labour intensive operation, whilst
   improving quality parameters

 • Overcome the dif culties of recruiting large numbers of seasonal staff
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Innovation
Continual operational improvement

• Sample collection
  • Continued investigation of alternative manufacturers, designs and
    technologies to remove risk of single supplier failure

• EZ Link (on farm device for capturing sample ID, cow ID and on-farm
  information)

  • Upgraded software
  • Upgrade of hardware underway

Innovation
Extracting increased value from herd-test samples
                                             7%
                                                                 8%
                              11 million milk mid-infra-red spectra
                                                                                         35%
                                                               10%
                                          data records

                                              AWS

                                                               11%

                                                                                         29%
                                                               New Phenotypes
                                                        Alternative testing procedures
                                                              Checks and alerts

                                 11 million milk samples
                                       herd testing

Innovation
 More animal information from herd test samples — Milk microbiome
                              Herd test samples contain many species:
                       DNA sequencing can interrogate all species simultaneously

                                            Cow                Bacteria          Viruses     Phage          etc.

Herd & Animal Health: Early disease detection of specific species, strains, and resistance to antibiotics
Farmer Health: Identification of human pathogens
Biosecurity: Identification of notifiable diseases and appearance of new diseases in NZ
Cow genotypes: Available for genomic selection
Traceability: Location of cows

Thank you for your attention